Orthogon
by Vashtijoy
Summary: So, how *did* Wedy get into L's HQ that time? Oneshot.


Truth be told, L was wholly familiar with Wedy's skills; he'd employed her often enough in the past. There were better black-hat hackers, better social engineers; there were certainly better assassins, since while Wedy was always prepared to take a life, she viewed it as a failure. But those who needed to knew that if you needed a top-flight security system disabled or an elaborate heist pulled off, you needed Wedy. And "those who needed to know" were a small enough set, since it was Wedy's opinion that if you were the most widely-known - well, _anything_, you were the worst.

No, the reason she wanted to defeat L's intricate security was simply to see if she could. _The best way to test a system is to break it. _It's wired into her: there's no security that can't be evaded, just as there's no safe that can't be cracked.

The surveillance turns out to be excessive even for L, but as long as there's a wireless link to intercept, or a cable to splice into, she can access, influence, rewrite it. The only entrance is through the foyer; there's no fire escape, which is not as unheard-of as it is illegal. It takes far longer to brute-force the encryption on the video links, to feed in a false image with an updating timestamp, than it does to assess the inner gate. The keycards are standard; she could program one, or steal one. But the metal detector - she's not going to be able to evade that. Ceramics and plastics won't get you as far as a minilaptop. _Fail, Mary, full of grace._

What's the backdoor, in this situation?

The tower is conveniently across the road from a bakery; the coffee is bilgewater, but the dessert - a sandwich filled with strawberries and whipped cream - is heaven. Over bread and cream, she turns the problem around like a pendant on a chain. Later on, night goggles in hand, she surveys the entirety of L's building from a nearby window. The blueprints, which are required to be on file with the city, are mysteriously missing.

The next night she approaches her backdoor, dressed in leather protective gear and those same infra-red goggles, strung about with cams, pitons and wires. Scaling the building is easy. There are electronic tripwires, and cameras are watching, but like the ones in the foyer, they're easily tricked. It's when she's finally on the roof, muscles torn and aching, that matters become trickier. She's surrounded by satellite dishes and aerials, but they're clearly feeding down into the command centre. The cameras she can see are static and don't rotate, but they cover the whole area. Unlike the ones further down the wall, though, they're _disabled_. The little red lights are off; none of them are recording. Can that be right? Moving horizontally along the wall, out of sight of the omnipresent-yet-strangely-uninterested cameras, she splices into the closest one. No signal. It's as if, now that she's inside the perimeter, she has a right to be there. There are no invisible tripwires, no sensors that she can detect, and she's confident she can detect every one made. Then she's under the porch, and then she's at the door—

Which is locked. That _bitch_.

It's a heavy security lock; it will melt shut, if she blows it. It doesn't have a computer to confuse, or a keypad to force. From a pocket of her jumpsuit, Wedy produces a small roll of cloth, filled with oddly-angled strips of metal, and tiny tools like a jeweller's. There's not a mechanical lock that doesn't follow the principles she learned in primary school, when her poor mother would insist she'd locked the freezer. The tumbler and its teeth - a pick at a time, rotating and brushing and wedging in _just_ the right place, until the thing prickles like a porcupine. It's work best done blind; listening for anything at all amiss, she closes her eyes, and can't see the intricate way her fingers flex, the quiver of the tendons in the backs of her hands.

Two minutes later, she's inside, and half an hour later, she's made her way to the command centre, undetected. "Hi," she says, cigarette holder in hand, cutting through the boring suits and their scattered shock, zeroing in on the one crook-kneed stare of unsurprised surprise as if she's seen it before. "What's for breakfast?"


End file.
